Several theories (Lloyd 1987, Menendez Pidal 1989, Penny 1991) have been proposed to account for the creation of the palatal semivowel suffix -y in Modern Spanish irregular first person present verb forms soy, doy, voy, estoy (I am, I give, I go, I am (located)). By comparing Old Spanish texts (c. 1200-1600), this study argues in favor of the hypothesis that the suffix -y results from the fusion of Old Spanish verb forms so, do, vo, esto with first person singular pronoun yo. The results demonstrate that the high token frequency of occurrence of yo immediately following so leads to the grammaticization of the construction so+yo into soy through bleaching,phonological reduction and decategorialization (Hopper & Traugott 1993, Bybee et al. 1994), in line with the universal tendency of pronouns to develop into person/number markers. The study also shows that the irregularity presented by soy attracted doy, voy, estoy into a small group of irregular first person singular present tense forms through semantic and phonological connections (Bybee 1985).

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